auction Charity Auction

GPS-
you are working through the nitty-gritty on this right now. Thanks for taking the lead.

I agree that you should not be responsible for deliveries and such. I don't know if it would be of benefit or not, but eBay does have charity listings for charities that are registered. There are a lot of smaller chrities that are not listed, but I just thought I'd mention that.

As a vendor/processor.... I could work with something like,

The item is put up for bid here on THP, people bid etc, The auction winner would paypal(or otherwise send the money), the money to me as a gift, (paypal fees), I would (somehow, depending on the charity) get the money to the charity and post proof of payment to charity. I would pay for postage for the item(s) in the auction to the winning bidder.
 
I will have to look into the eBay Charity listings. I haven't been a big fan of eBay for a long time. I do not like how they hit you for money for the listing, then hit you again for the money transfer and so on. If their Charity listings have lower costs I could see using them.

The PayPal fees are a bit of a sticking point for me as well, but I do not see away around paying fees for the money. What makes it worse, is that when the final payment to the charity is made, ultimately another 2-4% is going to be taken out by whomever the charities use for payment processing.

The more and more we talk about the raffle idea the more I like it too. I am looking into third-party raffle options. I know the big problem with stuff like that is people are always going to be suspicious of the result. If I can find a non-interested party to hold the tickets and draw the winners without having to pay large fees I could probably make it work.
 
GPS --- depending on what charity you are donating to you might be able to get someone from the charity to hold the drawing and send you the results (I would think everyone would trust someone involved with the charity that is getting the donation) - Figure that might also work well if they could post something on their website news to let other people outside this community know that a raffle was being held and perhaps get more participation (Figure you might get more exposure for some of the donators as well ! ) or perhaps The Hot Pepper would hold the drawing for you. ( I would hope everyone would trust the site owner ! )
 
Paypal has a "gift" option that doesn't charge fees. Don't know if eBay has that option. JDFan has a good idea for someone from the charity to do the raffle if that's the way it goes. Don't know if The Boss would want to get involved, but I wouldn't want to ask him to do that. He has enough going on with everything else.

Charity raffle, here's how I would envision it happening-
pick a small but recognizable number (like $2.22, or $1.23) those who want to enter the raffle would paypal that amount to whoever as a gift. All those who paid would be listed (abbreviated to protect confidentiality) and then the names would be put into a hat and winner drawn.

Kinda sounds like a lot of work, but everyone has a chance at winning. And after the first couple raffles, I don't know how many people will be interested in participating

Or the item just gets put up for bid. Highest bidder wins. Done deal.

Maybe do some raffles and some bids.
 
I have never noticed the gift option in PayPal. I will check that out.

I don't know that The Boss would want to be involved either, I am sure no matter how the winner is picked people will still call shenanigans, its just human nature.

I guess with raffles the key is to get the ticket price vs the odds of winning to an appropriate level against the value of the items. Again I have never run a raffle before but from what I can tell the total money raised is usually about double what the prize is worth. So a $50 prize would raise $100. If tickets are $1 each then people have a 1/100 chance of winning.

I can see the potential of raffles being able to raise bigger money than auctions. So I guess it all depends on what the members of THP find more appealing?
 
So, I am pretty happy with the results of the first auction. $65 was a good bid, I was hoping to see $100 but I guess that was wishful thinking. I think throwing $50 worth of product into one auction might have actually caused less interest in bidding. It might be more beneficial to do smaller auctions in order to get more people bidding. I also wonder if ending it on a Sunday night prevented some people from bidding.
 
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